Welcome

Hydrogen is expected to be an important future clean transport fuel. In the absence of a pipeline network, liquid hydrogen can be the most effective way to supply larger refuelling stations and fleet depots. However, today hydrogen liquefaction is expensive, energy-intensive and still relatively small-scale.

Project Outline

IDEALHY was an enabling project to develop an economically viable hydrogen liquefaction capacity in and for Europe. This has helped in accelerating rational infrastructure investment and enabling the rapid spread of hydrogen refuelling stations across the continent.

IDEALHY investigated the different steps in the liquefaction process in detail, using innovations and greater integration in an effort to reduce specific energy consumption by 50% compared to the state of the art, and simultaneously to reduce investment cost.

The project brought together world experts to develop a generic process design and plan for a large-scale demonstration of efficient hydrogen liquefaction in the range of up to 200 tonnes per day. This represents a substantial scale-up compared to existing and proposed plants worldwide.

The IDEALHY project received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) for the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative under grant agreement no. 278177. It started in November 2011 and was completed end of October 2013.